


Glory Days

by Lafayette1777



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Major injuries, Miscarriage, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, also it's not star wars unless someone ends up with a robotic hand, but it works dude, i know everyone and their mom has made her a pathfinder by now, jyn having a good time fucking shit up as a pathfinder, jyn trying to find a place in the rebellion, leia and cassian are bros, leia and cassian as bad ass spies, they make it off scarif but it's fucked up dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9399884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: Something is bound to rise from the ashes of Scarif. Something hopeful.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> my third rogue one fic in two weeks. nice. i am totally not obsessed at all of course not
> 
> anyways, this is in two parts: the first is in Jyn's POV, right after Scarif, and the second chapter will be Cassian's POV, some time down the road. Part 2 will be up soon.
> 
> thanks for reading!

The world smells vaguely of burnt flesh. Someone is screaming, the sound reverberating off the walls of the cargo hold. A moment later, she realizes it’s her. 

She’s forgotten where she is and how she’s gotten there. Forgotten everything, except the pain and the heat and the agonizing pressure of someone’s hands on the left side of her body. Her eyes are squeezed shut, her hands clawing blindly at what little of the world she can reach. Finally, she runs out of air, and opens her eyes with a gasp. 

It takes her a moment to recognize the figure looming over her. 

Cassian’s hands are moving briskly across her wound, but she can’t lift her head to see what he’s doing. All she knows is that the pain is beginning to abate, that her screams have to turned to wet, heaving gasps. She can feel her eyes stretched wide in shock. 

“Jyn, are you still with me?” Cassian asks, voice carefully neutral. She can’t formulate a response. 

Slowly, she’s regaining her grip on the present. She can hear Bodhi and K2 in the cockpit, discussing calculations for the jump to hyperspace. She can hear Cassian rifling through a medkit next to her head, stripping open packets of bacta patches and something else, something cool and leafy smelling. Across from her, she can see Chirrut’s prostrate form, limp and alarmingly still. 

Her hands are shaking. She’s beginning to remember.

It was Bodhi that saved them, but when the ship had come for them Cassian had been snatched up first. There was no reason for it; he’d simply been closer to K2’s outstretched arm. It was the luck of the draw. 

Jyn has never been terribly lucky.

She’d felt him pulled from her embrace and not understood what was happening. The wall of light at the horizon had been too much to bear alone, but she hadn’t had to bear it for long. A fraction of a second later, K2’s left arm had grabbed hold of her collar and dragged her inside. It was a fraction of a second too late.

She’s never been burned before. Not like this, at least. She’s afraid to look at what’s left of her body. Afraid to move, should that kind of pain return. Afraid that what’s left of her skin will slough off, leaving her weak and empty. She’s seen enough of Saw’s men come in after getting tagged by grenades to know what it looks like when there’s nothing left to salvage. She resists the urge to vomit, the tears prickling her eyes. _Survival_ , she thinks. _That’s all that matters._

“Jyn?” Cassian asks, softer this time. But she can’t meet his eyes.

Instead, she points across the cargo hold, to Chirrut. Cassian shifts and then she can see Baze, too, slumped against the wall. There’s blood all down his front. She thinks she can see an entry wound in the left side of his chest. Cassian stumbles toward him, dragging the medkit as he goes, but there’s something hesitant in his movements. She recognizes the sentiment.

You can’t waste resources on a lost cause. 

Still, Cassian uses a rag to apply pressure to the wound, staunching the flow of whatever blood Baze still has. Eventually, Baze tries to turn his head to the left, but doesn’t seem to have the energy left. Chirrut remains out of his line of sight. 

“Is he alright?” Baze wheezes. 

Cassian glances at Chirrut’s motionless frame, and makes the same deduction Jyn already has. His breaths have long since ceased. Cassian’s eyes turn back to Baze. 

“He’s fine,” Cassian says softly. “We’ll take care of him.”

Baze nods wearily, and grabs Cassian’s free hand. All of their fingers are covered in blood. Jyn wishes she could crawl her way over to them, or at least get her mouth to move, but she’s still in a shaking, raw heap on the other side of the hold. The heat beneath her skin is starting to come back, like a pot on low boil. The pain is white noise in the back of her mind, gaining in volume. She must black out for a moment; the next thing she knows, Cassian is by her side again, and Baze has slumped over out of her sight. Cassian opens his mouth, but she shakes her head furiously. She doesn’t want him to tell her she’ll be fine. She knows what that means. 

Before he can say anything, though, there’s a jolt and the screech of shearing metal. A scream tears through Jyn as her raw skin slides across the sandy floor. She watches Cassian fall beside her, gripping hard at his side like he’s trying to keep his ribs from falling out. From the cockpit, she hears Bodhi swear loudly, but can’t latch onto any of the technicalities he spouts after that. K2 offers up a statistic she doesn’t understand. 

Finally, Bodhi appears on the ladder down into the hold, leaping off at the bottom and turning to face them with wide-eyed, adrenaline-laced intensity. “Hyperdrive’s fucked,” he says breathlessly. “We’re going to have to put her down somewhere.”

“What?” Cassian labors to his feet, clutching at his side. He can’t seem to put any weight on his left leg, either, but he’s still the only one even remotely functional down here. He’s scowling, from some combination of pain and frustration. “We’re in the middle of Imperial space.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Bodhi retorts. “I can’t fix this in-flight. I might not be able to fix it at all. We need a ship with a functioning hyperdrive.”

“Shit,” Cassian breathes, and limps toward the most likely hiding place for the star charts. Bodhi, for the first time, seems to let his eyes survey the state of them. Chirrut and Baze, long gone. Jyn, barely intact. Cassian, trying to hold it all together, and failing. 

Bodhi takes an involuntary step back, a hand over his mouth. 

“Bodhi, look at me,” Cassian says gruffly, booting up a datapad. His hands are still soaked in drying blood. “Focus.”

Bodhi gives a distracted nod, his eyes still on Jyn. She’s not sure what she tries to say, but all that comes out is a grating rasp. Bodhi asks, “Is she—?”

“We need to move fast,” Cassian replies, allowing himself only a brief glance her way. She’s glad; to meet eyes now would only loosen her grip as well. If they are to continue evading death, her resolve cannot falter. Even if she wishes, on some level, that she was still on that soft, painless beach, wrapped up in him, his lips against her neck—

She blacks out. 

 

 

When she slips back into the conscious world, it’s with confusion—but not pain. 

Cassian is above her again, cradling her head with one hand while he smoothes something across her cheek with the other. It’s cool and soothing against her ragged skin. She blinks up at him, eyes slightly unfocused, watching the the tiny sliver of tongue sticking out in concentration between his tight lips. 

“You’re back,” he says, when he realizes she’s watching. There’s more than a little relief in his tone. 

“Did I go somewhere?” she asks, and is pleased to find her throat still intact, even if the skin around it feels tight and sticky. 

He smiles down at her, some of the lines in his face softening. There are dark circles under his eyes, and the gray light filtering in around them is turning his skin paler than it really is. She realizes, a moment later, that she’s no longer on the floor of the cargo hold, that the air is fresh and laden with moisture. Above her, the largest trees she’s ever seen stretch into the gray clouds. “Where are we?” she rasps. 

He keeps his expression neutral, for her sake. “Some Imperial-occupied moon Bodhi knows.”

She doesn’t have the energy to muster the proper combination of rage and panic at such a thought. To make it off Scarif, only to be captured here—

She pushes the thought away before it can spread. 

“Shit,” Jyn breathes. 

“I know,” Cassian sighs in agreement. “Hopefully we’ll be off soon.”

She smiles up at him, exhaustion pulling at her eyelids. “Hope?”

He laughs, quiet and rumbling. She lets her heavy lids begin to close, his laugh following her all the way down into darkness.

 

 

“How bad is it?”

“I think K2 and I can fix it, given the right parts.”

It’s sunset, now, she thinks—the clouds are no longer a gray slate. There are voices somewhere off to her right, voices she knows she should recognize, even through the fog of her brain. She wiggles the fingers of her right hand and finds that she’s wrapped in a blanket, her head supported by someone’s balled-up jacket. Again, unconsciousness has robbed her of what little situational awareness she possessed before, but slowly it comes back to her. Scarif. The hyperdrive. An Imperial occupied moon. 

Her injuries. 

It takes a while to work up the courage to disentangle herself from the blanket enough to get a look at her body. When she does, though, she lets out a sigh of relief—Cassian has covered her well enough that none of the horror beneath pokes through. Her left leg and arm are a clean slate of white gel bandages, thickest around her hand and fingers to the point of immobilization. Her shoulder and jaw and part of her left cheek are covered, too, along with part of her scalp. What remains of her hair is a singed mess. A pile of spent bacta patches lies at her feet. 

“It’s not as bad as it was,” Cassian says, emerging from the twilight shadows. “I’m still a bit worried about your hand, though. Not very much flesh to spare. But they might be able to do something about it when we get back to base.”

He’s still limping, a little, and clutching at his side when his stride is any longer than shuffle, but he looks better than he did on Scarif. He must’ve used some of the bacta on himself, then, which makes her feel a little bit less entirely at his mercy. 

“Are you in pain?” he asks. 

There’s a sting and a heat beneath the bandages, and a tightness she’s never felt before. She’s never been one for queasiness when it comes to gore, but looking at the lump of bandages that was once her left hand turns her stomach with an unfamiliar degree of fear. She shakes her head. 

“I had to cut a lot of your clothes off to clean the burns, but there was an extra uniform in the hold,” he says, somewhat sheepishly, holding up a gray mass of fabric. 

“Imperial gray.” Her lips twist into a hesitant smirk. “Not sure it’s really my color.”

He returns her smile, but the exhaustion from the last time she’d been awake hasn’t left either of them. Bodhi arrives just as Cassian begins to help her into the uniform, careful not to catch any seams on the adhesive bandages. The sleeves are too long on her, as are the pants. Both of her legs feel unstable, but a searing pain runs up the left one when she puts weight on it. Cassian zips her in, leaving the collar open to mind the bandages on her neck. 

“You’re alright,” Bodhi says, once he sees her standing, a tone of reverence in his voice. She suspects he’s not as familiar with the notion of survival as she is. He looks a little scorched around the edges, but otherwise unscathed. 

“I’m alive,” she retorts, shrugging only her right shoulder. 

Before Bodhi can reply, her eyes catch on something in the lengthening shadows to her left. Cassian follows her gaze to the two blanket-wrapped figures, resting side by side between the roots of one of the massive trees.

“There was nothing I—” Cassian begins.

She waves him off. “I know.”

How long ago was it that Chirrut took her hand, that Baze called her _little sister_? It may have been decades; she isn’t sure. Her throat tightens, and a shaky breath escapes her lips.

“We’re thinking of doing some sort of funeral pyre, here,” Bodhi says softly. “Since we can’t take them back to Jedha.”

“Won’t the smoke attract Imperials?” she asks.

“We’ll light it just as we leave,” Cassian answers, then pauses. “I think...it’s good that they’re together, isn’t it? Rather than one having to live without the other.”

It’s a surprisingly sentimental notion coming from him, she thinks. But when she looks over, his face has been wiped of all emotion in that curious way of his. The spy is back. 

“I think you’re right,” she murmurs and, for the briefest of seconds, something flickers in his eyes. 

Inside the ship, K2 is knee deep in the mess of wiring beneath the metal flooring of the cockpit. He looks up at her when Cassian helps her hobble in, supporting the unburned half of her body. “Oh, Jyn,” K2 says, seeming only mildly offended by her survival. “There’s a 48.73% chance your burns will become infected.”

“I like those odds,” Jyn deadpans, sending him a characteristic eyebrow lift. Cassian sends K2 a glare over her shoulder as he leads her back toward the crew’s quarters a few steps below. Then he’s helping her settle into one of the cots, grimacing as he leans over. 

“Are you alright?” she asks. 

“Ribs are a bit sore,” he replies, nonchalant. She wonders if he’s lying— she wonders if his ability to lie matches her ability to see a liar for what he is. He smoothes down a corner of the bandage on her cheek that’s come up. 

“How bad is it, really?” she asks, searching his face. Daring him to lie. 

“I’ve seen worse.”

She reaches out her good hand to clasp his, before he can pull away. “You took care of me,” she mutters, fixing her eyes on him. 

He says nothing, turning away. But not before she sees his cheek lift in a smile. 

 

 

In the morning, she awakes to the sound of a welding torch, and finds Bodhi in the belly of the ship, goggles down over his eyes and heavy gloves pulled up to his elbows. He gives her a weak smile when he sees her stumbling out, gripping the threshold with her right arm while cradling the left one to her chest. 

“Any sign of Imperial activity?” she asks, scratching at where bandage meets skin. 

“There are some troopers doing training exercises about thirty klicks west,” Bodhi replies, shutting off the torch. “But we’re about done here, anyways.”

Leaning against the wall is Chirrut’s staff. Baze’s cannon lies not far from it. For a moment, Bodhi’s eyes unfocus, and he looks far closer to the shell of a man they pulled out of Jedha. He murmurs something to himself, then seems to shake it off; a moment later, he’s helping her stagger outside. She’s not sure which one of them is shaking, or if it’s both of them.

The bodies have been moved to a bed of sticks in the center of the clearing. “I don’t understand this ritual,” K2 says, watching Cassian drag a branch out of the woods. Cassian doesn’t reply, but when he winces bending over, K2 waves him off and carries it for him. 

“Are we all set?” Cassian asks, once he’s in range of Bodhi. 

“It’ll either work or we’ll explode,” Bodhi says. It’s not really a joke. 

Jyn finds that she can stand on her own, as long as she doesn’t mind being a little lopsided. Bodhi kneels at the base of the pyre, and Cassian hands him fire paste and a rod. Before long, black smoke fills the air. Jyn tells herself that it’s responsible for the moisture in her eyes, the tightness in her throat. 

After a while, she feels Cassian’s hand slipping down her arm, before his fingers interlace with hers. She bites down hard on her bottom lip, and doesn’t look at him. 

 

 

They don’t explode. Bodhi and K2 get them off the moon and into hyperspace without incident, and the moment they’re in space less clogged with Imperials, Cassian starts trying to get a message out to any Rebellion outposts in range that might be able to relay it back to Base One. He receives no reply. 

“What does that mean?” Jyn asks, even though she has some idea already. She’s curious what he’ll tell her. Curious what degree of trust exists between them. 

“It means they think we’re not who we say we are, or that we’ve been compromised,” Cassian replies, squinting at the controls. “Or this comm is fucked.”

Jyn nods from where she’s sitting, somewhat awkwardly, on an ammunition crate. She’s keeping her leg rigid, stuck straight out in front of her, so as not to pull at the skin beneath the bandages. The end of her foot nudges one end of Chirrut’s staff when she straightens out her toes. Eventually, Cassian lowers himself carefully down onto the spot next to her. 

“We should be dead, shouldn’t we?” he asks, after one long moment. 

“I thought we were,” Jyn says. Her eyes land on where her left arm lies uselessly in her lap. “I thought I was.”

His voice is quiet. “I’ve never come that close before.”

She looks up at him, sees something kindred in his expression. “It was almost a relief,” she says, at barely more than a whisper volume. It feels traitorous, but Cassian just nods. Some of the shame in her expression is mirrored in his; it lurks in the black of his eyes. 

Saw would be appalled, she thinks, to hear her say such a thing. He’d taught her to survive, to keep moving. Whatever peace she’d found in what she thought were her last moments would not impress him. Only continuing to fight would. 

Cassian meets her gaze, and she can see in his eyes that they’re thinking of the same thing. There’s no longer any human alive whom she trusts more than him. They had been content to spend their last moments in each other’s arms—that means something. 

She just doesn’t know what. 

 

 

The comms remain silent until they enter Yavin IV airspace, when the brisk, frank voice of an ATC informs them of their landing pad and position in the queue. Jyn feels the air thicken with the tension and gets to her feet, even if in her current state it doesn’t make much difference. In the cockpit, Cassian leans against K2’s chair and watches them descend over the jungle, his shoulders tight. 

On the ground, a crowd awaits. 

Cassian steps down from the cockpit, disarming himself as he goes. The blaster is tossed from his belt, as well as one of the knives in his boot. There’s another one in there, she knows, and on some level it’s presence comforts her. 

“Okay,” he says, finally, eyes on the door. He rubs absently at his ribs. Bodhi and K2 have followed him out of the cockpit, and Jyn shuffles toward them. There’s a moment, then, where all the four of them are able to do is look at each other. Aware, perhaps, that once they step outside, everything will change. Rogue One is bigger them all of them, now; their callsign is no longer their own. 

Jyn swallows painfully and meets Cassian’s eyes, just as the door slides open. 

Draven is waiting, surrounded by a heavily armed ten man squadron. The weapons, though, are all pointed at the tarmac, as though their presence is incidental. “Captain Andor,” Draven greets, unsmiling. “It’s good to see you. We weren’t sure you made it out.”

“Neither were we, for a minute,” Cassian replies, eyes cold and guarded. “Bit of a hyperdrive problem. That’s why it took us so long to hobble back.”

“Is it,” Draven says, voice flat. He motions toward the rebel at his right. “Search the ship.”

Half of the squadron mobilizes. Bodhi frowns, but Cassian looks unsurprised. 

“Sorry, Captain, but you know the drill,” Draven says. “Security is security. Anyone who goes off the radar after something like that—”

Cassian shakes his head, raising his hands in surrender. “I know.”

Bodhi and K2 follow suit, and Jyn moves to raise her good arm just as a rebel aims to enter the ship behind her. It’s mistimed, though—the soldier accidentally jostles her left side, sending a wave of white hot pain crashing through her and knocking her off balance. She falls to her knees with a swear that’s mostly a scream, agony ripping through her when her bandaged skin collides with the ground. 

In her peripheral vision, she sees Cassian jerk toward her, and just as quickly be pulled back by a soldier cuffing his hands together. “Hands off her,” Cassian says, all measured civility of the last few moments dropping into a growl. “She needs a medic.”

Spots dance in front of Jyn’s vision where she’s still hunched over the floor. If she passes out now, where will she wake up? Her stomach churns from the pain and the uncertainty of it.

“And she’ll get it,” replies Draven evenly. “Once we can ascertain that she’s not a security risk.”

Cassian snarls something else, but she doesn’t hear. Slowly, she gathers her right leg under her, attempting to lift herself back to her feet. Her visions tunnels unexpectedly, though, and a flash of pain shoots from her ankle to the tips of her fingers, leaving her breathless in its wake. Then she’s on her back, and there’s some sort of commotion around her, but the world is graying out again. There’s no fight left in her. She thinks, for the second time in as many hours, that Saw would be thoroughly unimpressed. 

 

 

_Welcome home._

It must be the familiarity of the humid, rotting jungle air that has those words running through her brain again. The phrase seems to sharpen her, bringing the world back into focus. There’s a buzzing next to her ear, moving along her scalp. She sits up abruptly, only to realize that it’s just a droid, shaving off what little hair she has left. It’s arm-like apparatus extends and continues its work, until all that remains on her head is a fine, dark fur. She catches sight of her reflection in the chrome of a nearby machine, and recognizes only her eyes. 

Her skin is sticky with bacta residue, and no longer bandaged. The once-burned skin on the fleshier parts of her body is raised and pinkish, but no longer seems to be in danger of sloughing off. It’s her left hand that’s the problem. 

It seems to be missing some fingers. 

The medidroid that is scanning her vitals notices her elevated heartbeat. “The prosthetics droid will be in this afternoon,” it says in its indifferent, mechanical voice. “You will experience some scarring, mostly around your face, neck, and arm.”

Jyn nods, unable to take her eyes off the stubs where three of her fingers once dwelt. She’s witnessed far worse injuries, of course, but there’s something particularly grotesque about seeing yourself so fragmented. So incomplete.

“You should have seeked treatment sooner.”

Jyn bristles, thinking of Cassian’s gentle hands, and waves the droid out of her sight. 

In its absence, Mon Mothma appears. “May I enter?” she asks. 

Jyn fixes her with an impassive look. She feels at a distinct disadvantage, here, with her useless hand and no hair to hide behind. She shivers in the thin robe they’ve wrapped her in. 

Mothma enters anyway. 

“Shouldn’t I be in some dark room being interrogated?” Jyn asks, leveling a glare at the chief of state. She wiggles what remains of her left hand for emphasis. “Or have you decided that I’ve given you enough?”

Mon Mothma, to her credit, doesn’t flinch. “Captain Andor and Mr. Rook have offered satisfactory enough explanations.”

Jyn tries not to let anything flicker in her expression at the mention of their names, but she knows she’s failed. The thought of them, locked up somewhere on the base, exhausted and injured and forced to rehash the hell that was the last few days causes her chest to tighten with rage. She takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “So what do you want?”

Mon Mothma’s eyes are patient, but hard. “Once some of the post-battle chaos subsides, there will be ships available. I thought you should know that our agreement regarding your freedom still stands, if you want it to.”

Jyn isn’t sure what to say, so she says nothing, and bites at her thumbnail until Mon Mothma eventually leaves her in peace. Survival is still her priority. She should be packing her things, she thinks. She should be ready to move the moment a ship becomes available, disentangling herself from this mess of a rebellion as fast as possible. 

Instead, she lies back against the pillows, and wonders where Cassian is. 

 

 

He appears later in the day, just as the prosthetics droid is finishing the last of the reflex checks on her new hand. She watches the new mechanics in her wrist click into place. It’s going to be another few days before there will be skin to cover the metal digits, so until then she’ll be an amalgam of flesh and metal. 

“I’m trying to be more like you, Kay,” she says, when the droid follows Cassian in. 

K2 somehow sends her a withering look, though she’s not sure exactly how he manages to convey it. 

Cassian does not look any less exhausted, but he’s changed out of his ragged, sandy clothes and his hair is wet and clean. The rebels don’t seem to have inflicted any new wounds on him, either, which lends her some level of comfort. He crosses the room and deflates onto the bed beside her. 

“Has someone seen to your ribs?” she asks, sliding over to make room for him on the edge of the mattress. 

“They’re fine,” he says. It’s not really an answer. 

“Bodhi?”

“He’s getting looked at now.” His eyes are on her left hand, on the junction between skin and metal. She thinks of pulling away, out from under his gaze, but he reaches for her instead. She watches her new fingers curl around his, wonders if they’re cold against his skin. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. 

She shakes her head briskly, reaching out to wrap his hand in both of hers. How odd, she thinks, for their touches to have become so casual, so intrinsic. “You took care of all us.”

He shrugs. Her hand, she suspects, is not what he’s apologizing for. 

“There was 89.12% chance that no one would make it off Scarif alive,” K2 chimes in, prodding through a collection of medical instruments laid out on a counter, much to a lingering medidroid’s irritation. 

Cassian looks back at her with a smirk. “Aren’t we lucky?”

Saw would scorn such an idea. There is no luck, he’d say. Only skill, and loyalty. 

Jyn smiles. “We are.”

 

 

To clear space in medbay, they assign her a bed in the enlisted barracks. She takes one look at her meager bunk in the windowless room, thinks of Wobani, and turns on her heel. 

Cassian’s room doesn’t have a window either, but it does have a sink. And, instead of three bunk beds, there’s only a single cot with a placid blue blanket pulled neatly up to the pillow. She drops her rucksack at her feet and lies sideways across the bed, her feet hanging over the edge. Holding her left hand up to the overhead light, she can see the outline of something darker than bone lurking beneath the new skin over three fingers. How strange, she ruminates—to carry something with her that is not her own. She’s been piecing herself back together for so long now that it feels out of place to carry someone else’s work with her, out into the galaxy, beneath her very skin. 

The door slides open. If Cassian is surprised to see her, sprawled across his ascetic little haven, than he doesn’t show it. 

“Am I to assume that this means you’re staying, then?” he asks, crossing the room to drop his coat and datapad on the dresser. Leaning against the dull, unobtrusive piece of furniture is Chirrut’s staff. She’s been trying to keep it in her peripheral vision wherever she goes. A painful reminder, but a necessary one. Saw would not appreciate the sentimentality, but she’s done letting the dead be forgotten. 

“Do you want me to stay?” she asks, propping herself up on one arm to raise her eyebrows at him. She wonders, idly, if they’re talking about his room or the Rebellion as a whole. She wonders if they are one and the same, in essence. 

“If I say no, will you stay just to scorn me?” he asks, something like amusement tugging at his lips. 

She pulls herself into a sitting position just as he settles down beside her. “I will do whatever I damn well please.”

He reaches out, running one gentle hand over the downy hair on her head. It’s hardly a touch, but there’s something intimate and unavoidably fond in it. “I believe you.”

His eyes are dark, but less impenetrable than usual. Or maybe she’s just getting better at looking past the spy, into the man. Before his hand can slip away, she clasps it in hers, uses it to pull him closer until his warm breath mixes with hers. 

She thinks she might want to kiss him. Thinks it’ll probably be a rather large mistake. 

She does it anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this occurs some time after the Battle of Endor, though I couldn't give you an exact year.

Somehow, Cassian Andor is still alive. 

It’s a fact that baffles him nearly everyday, when he’s not otherwise engaged with staying alive. But sometimes he feels the surprise more keenly. Like now, as he navigates through the mess hall of the fleet’s flagship and realizes that there is a relatively large proportion of rebels here who were not even alive when he joined this fight. 

The surreal dissonance of such an observation makes it easier for him to sequester himself with Jyn and Bodhi in a corner booth. Bodhi is talking about his latest supply run—his squadron was pursued by TIE fighters for half the trip and had to take the long way back to base. There’s still a nervous tremor in his voice, even as he tries to smile through it. 

Jyn claps a hand on his shoulder, that quiet grin of hers spreading across her face. “They were no match for Lieutenant Rook, were they?”

Bodhi snorts, but something loosens in his smile. Across the mess, Cassian’s eye catches on Kes Dameron, meandering through the chow line with his son his hip. Poe has been tailing his father all day, which can only mean one thing. Cassian meets Jyn’s eyes, and knows she’s thinking the same. She says nothing, as is the custom—it’s difficult discuss the end of their time together when it always feels like it’s just begun. 

After the meal, Bodhi is drawn off for training maneuvers by a horde of rebels dressed in orange uniforms identical to his. Bodhi barely has time to wave over his shoulder to the two of them before he’s drawn into the fold. Cassian watches him drift seamlessly into the sea of bodies. Bodhi, sometimes, is a long way from the man they pulled off Jedha. He has become something else entirely—a new conglomeration of fear and trauma and strength. 

Once the corridors begin to empty out, Cassian glances over his shoulder, and reaches for Jyn’s hand. It’s not much of a secret, but neither of them are much for displays. The notion of being _seen_ , of any of what he holds most dear being common knowledge, seems far too dangerous, even here. There are parts of himself that must remain within him. 

And maybe with her, too.

In the dim quiet of their quarters, he can’t stop himself from asking, “So, when are you leaving?”

She looks like she might not reply, for a moment. He can imagine her slipping off in the night, just to avoid the agony of saying goodbye. Instead, she answers, “Day after tomorrow.”

The deployment of the Pathfinders is always short notice, and always rather subtle. He has the security clearance to know where they’ll be heading, but often he’d rather not know. Awareness of the reality of the situation does not make it any easier. 

“Okay,” he says, keeping his tone light. Her back is to him; she’s pretending to look for the vibroblade in the sock drawer. “I can work with that.”

She snorts, finally looking back at him. “Oh, you can?”

Cassian nods, the beginnings of a smile pulling at his lips. He meets her in the center of the room. “I hope you don’t have anywhere to be for the next two days,” she breathes, mouth only centimeters from his. 

He’s almost smiling too broadly to kiss her. She pulls back for just a moment, and he feels her eyes roaming over him, something soft and awed in the depths of her gaze. 

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and he lets a hand drift between her thighs as their mouths collide again.

 

 

There are a number of reasons Jyn has ended up in the Pathfinders rather than as an intelligence agent proper, the first and most obvious being that the burn scars on her face and neck make her far too conspicuous for undercover work. While time has healed the skin to an extent, she is still too easily identified. The second reason is a little more nebulous, but understandable—Jyn is still a guerrilla at heart. She can rely on lies and deceit as long as it gets her out of a tight spot, but ultimately her skills align best with outright violence. The Pathfinders are as close to the Partisans as the Rebel Alliance openly allows. 

The third reason is the one that Cassian struggles with the most, and has since the moment he realized that their lives have become so thoroughly entangled. The fact of the matter is that it’s too much of a security risk for the two of them to ever work together directly. She is a liability to him, as much as he is to her. If she were captured or injured in the line of duty, he has no faith in his ability to not compromise the mission objectives or himself. It’s pathetic and unprofessional, but it does him well to know his limitations. The distance provided by the Pathfinders affords them some breathing room. 

His struggle, however, is that he _wants_ her by his side, plowing into danger wherever it arises. He trusts her more than anyone else. They are, undeniably, a formidable team. He’d known it from the moment he thought his last breaths would be in her arms, on Scarif. The urge to follow her into battle is a strange and ceaseless one. 

These are not generally thoughts it feels safe to entertain. Sometimes, though, they encroach upon him when he least expects it; an enemy creeping up behind him in the dark. 

“I hear the Pathfinders accomplished their first mission objective,” Leia Organa is saying, staring nonchalantly down at her datapad. 

Cassian grunts in acknowledgment. Jyn has been gone for a week. His bed is cold; often, he finds a reason to avoid it. 

Leia looks up at him, clearly unimpressed by his facade of indifference. She adds, “Looks like they’re ahead of schedule.”

“Is that so?” he asks, finally meeting her eyes. She’s smirking at him. “And what is General Solo up to today?”

She twists absently at the ring on her finger, a simple thing with a brilliant opal stone in the center. When it had first appeared on her hand, Cassian didn’t believe Solo was capable of spotting such elegance. He’d told Jyn as much and she’d cackled for a full minute at his lack of faith. “I haven’t the faintest,” Leia says, her smile weakening. “Suppose it’s better to not know sometimes, don’t you agree?”

He thinks of Jyn, on some far off world, armed to the teeth and full of rage. A goddess of destruction. It’s an abstract, stylized image. It’s easier to swallow. He looks at Leia, and nods softly. 

The intelligence briefing begins, with Draven at the head of the table. There are stirrings on Malastare; Cassian has a feeling he’s going to be the first one to have a look at what exactly they are, and soon. It is entirely conceivable, even likely, that he will be gone by the time Jyn returns. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

It wouldn’t be the first time, either, that he’s wondered how long it’ll all go on. How many more missions await before he’s dead or the war is over or both. It’d taken a lot, after Scarif, to get back into things—not just physically, but philosophically. To remind himself why he does what he does. He’s learned to think of things in a very narrow way. Jyn had explained it best, ultimately, one very dark night, with her lips next to his ear, her breath on his skin. Originally, she’d thought of her father, of Saw, she said. Now, she fights for Bodhi, for the memory of Chirrut and Baze. 

And for Cassian, too. 

It’s easier to do the sorts of things he does if one convinces oneself that it’s for some _one_ , rather than some _thing_. Rather than an abstract cause, absorbing more and more of his life and youth everyday. 

“So when are you thinking of heading to Malastare?” Leia asks, as they wander back out of the darkness of command center. She matches him stride for stride. 

“I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of agents doing preliminary recon in the area,” he says, frowning off into the middle distance. 

“I’d like to come along,” Leia says brusquely, already scrolling through another topic on her datapad. It’s not a question, and Cassian doesn’t bristle—she does outrank him, after all. “I’d like to see to some of these last loose ends myself.”

He can’t blame her. You see enough Death Stars in your lifetime and you start to grow wary. “Of course.”

“Cassian prefers my company over organics,” K2 says, trudging behind them. “And Organas.”

“ _Kay_ ,” Cassian reprimands, but Leia just smiles and marches off without a look back. 

“I thought you would appreciate the wordplay,” K2 says. He sounds offended, as he often does. 

Cassian just frowns.

 

 

Poe Dameron is a very strange little kid, but he supposes anyone who grows up in a place like this would be. Cassian teaches him how to hack a datapad so that Poe can use it draw pictures one Sunday morning, when the base is slow like molasses and Cassian is avoiding the life he’s supposed to be living. Poe immediately uses one chubby hand to sketch out the vague shape of an X-Wing, grinning proudly when he holds it up for Cassian’s approval. 

“Just like your mom’s, yeah?” Cassian asks, a smile pulling at his lips, and Poe nods vigorously. 

As if on cue, Shara Bey appears in the corridor, and Cassian knows instantly by the smile on her face what her arrival means. 

“Where?” Cassian asks, springing to his feet. 

“Bay nine,” she replies, turning her beaming smile down toward her son as she scoops him up. “Let’s go see your dad, shall we?”

Her voice fades behind him as he accelerates into a jog toward the hangar. A U-Wing has just set down where Shara said it would, and a ragged collection of camouflage-clad figures are stumbling out of it. For a moment, Cassian can’t locate the one he’s looking for in the uniformity of the crowd, but then she tilts her chin up just slightly and it’s like coming home. It’s her, and only her. 

Something snaps. She’s in his arms, and then he’s kissing her, even with the burn of the eyes of others on his back. 

Maybe he’s been thinking too much in her absence. Maybe something about Malastare is making him nervous. Regardless, the world feels tenuous, and he holds onto it by holding onto her. 

Maybe his resolve is beginning to crumble. Maybe the spy in him no longer has control.

She pulls back after a moment, sending him a smile that’s both dazed and a little baffled. There’s dirt and blood in her short fringe of hair, exposed by the hood that’s fallen back in her haste to meet him. “Um, hello,” she says, wiping at a spot of ash that’s been transferred from her cheek to his in the embrace. 

“Hi,” he murmurs, unable to keep the teeth out of his smile.

“Everything alright?”

“It is now.” Empirically, he knows this is not a true statement. For a moment, though, he lets himself believe it. 

 

 

Where Cassian is wiry, Jyn is strong. He runs one hand over her broad back, across the scars raised against the pale skin. She’s sitting up in bed, checking her comm link, but Cassian is still reclined against the pillows, admiring the expanse of her made visible in the dim light. Eventually, she lays back down next to him, and he watches where their feet disappear into darkness at the end of the bed. 

“Kes is out of the woods,” she sighs. “They’ve stopped the bleeding.”

Cassian hums in relief, shifting until even more of her warm skin presses against his. His breathing begins to even out; he’s drifting toward sleep when she speaks again. 

“He was talking about going home, before we started taking fire,” she says quietly. “Not home, like the fleet. Like _home_. The world he’s from.”

In the darkness, he can only see the vague outline of her features, and none of the expression on them. 

“I can’t imagine Shara would ever agree to that,” he says.

“She’d do it for Poe.”

Cassian doesn’t really know what a normal life is, but Poe probably deserves it. War or not, childhood still exists, and someone should have a chance at it.

As for him, he doesn’t know what he deserves. Presumably, the war will one day be over. If he’s alive, he’ll have to find something to do. They both will. He wonders if a galaxy at peace is as unfathomable to her as it is to him.

“Do you ever think—?”

She doesn’t finish her question. 

He folds his arms around her, and says nothing. 

 

 

Jyn appears in the hangar just as Cassian finishes stocking the last of the emergency provisions on the waiting U-Wing. Leia is cleaning and reloading her blaster on the loading ramp, hands methodical and confident. She looks up when Jyn says, with a smirk raising the side of her mouth, “You’re going to have look after him for me.”

K2 takes offense. “That is my job,” he says imperiously, before stalking toward the cockpit. 

Leia laughs, leaping spryly to her feet. “I’ll do my best.”

Cassian sends Jyn a withering look, but can’t hide the smile in his eyes. Leia disappears inside the ship, and the rest of the hangar is relatively empty—he takes advantage of the quiet and reaches for Jyn. It’s not enough time; it never is. 

She kisses him languidly, her fingers twisting into his belt loops like she’s afraid he’ll float off. 

He pulls away, just barely. “I will come back,” he murmurs into her mouth. 

“You always do,” she replies. All traces of levity have vanished from her eyes. He places one last kiss on the side of her mouth, a hand coming up to cradle her chin. Then, he’s turning back toward the ship. He knows better than to look back. 

 

 

This, he thinks, is going to be a horrible way to die. 

The pain is almost gone, now. What’s left in its place is just exhaustion. How long has he spent waiting, muscles tensed, for the next blow to hit its mark? It’s been years, decades. Perhaps he’s always waited for that other shoe to drop, to remind him why fear accompanies every step he takes.

Today, it’s come in the form of a blaster wound in the chest. The effort to breathe requires too much energy. His bones are empty—this war has depleted of all that he has left. Every inhalation hurts. This world is not Scarif, either: the sky is dark and cold. No cerulean waters lap at his feet. He takes another wet, heaving breath. This death will not be a good one. 

Leia, so far, has managed to drag him out of town and into the rocky outskirts. She’s stronger than she looks; he’s sure he’s just dead weight. The fact that she’s bothered to save him means they are not being pursued, the knowledge of which is a brief comfort. The troopers, then, had not known their identities, only that they were out after curfew. Even if he’s dead, then, the mission isn’t in complete shambles. 

K2 meets up with them soon enough, and carries Cassian the rest of the way back to the ship, expelling crisp statistics the whole way about Cassian’s likelihood of survival. If Cassian didn’t know better, than he’d think that K2 is trying to calm his own nerves. 

“The mission,” Cassian manages to rasp, once K2 lays him down on one of the ship’s bunks and Leia reaches for the medpac beneath it. He searches for Leia’s gaze, tries to make himself look resolute. “It’s not finished.”

From the cockpit, he can hear K2 already firing up the aft engines, running through the pre-flight checklists. 

“You should leave me and try to finish it,” he croaks out, before sucking in another shuddering, painful breath. He’s too tired to lift his head, too tired to keep his eyes open. Leia looks up just as his lids are beginning to flutter closed. 

“ _Cassian_ ,” she snaps, and his eyes shoot open again. He catches just a second of panic on her face before she shoves it away. “First of all, do not _ever_ tell me what I ‘should’ do.”

He snorts, regretting it instantly as agony, white hot and blinding, cuts across his chest. 

“Second, we are not the Empire. We’re not leaving you behind. Not again.” She’s ripping the packages off bacta patches with a ferocity he’s not seen in her before. “And I told Jyn I’d look after you, didn’t I?”

He smiles, or maybe he just thinks about it. Because then Leia is putting pressure on his wound to try to staunch the bleeding and the pain, ripe and hot and pulsing, rips through him again. He slips into darkness just as K2’s voice asks, from the cockpit, “Is Cassian alright?”

 

 

There’s something nestled in the bowl of his hand, wound around his fingers. It’s the first thing he notices, when his senses begin to return. He knows what it is without having to look. 

He focuses his eyes on Jyn instead, where she’s perched on the chair next to his bed. She’s folded in on herself—her legs tightly crossed, her elbows resting on her knees as she stares blankly ahead. It takes him a few tries to force noise out of his dry lips, but finally he manages, “Jyn?”

Her head snaps around to meet his eyes, but that’s the only part of her that moves. She gives him a halting, hesitant smile, like she’s afraid this isn’t all real. Like she’s still waiting for the worst to arrive. They’ve been here before, though sometimes the roles are reversed. Any relief always feels achingly temporary. 

“You came back,” she says softly. 

“I said I would.” He tugs his exhausted muscles into something resembling a smile, and then holds up the hand closest to her. It shakes with the effort, but he manages to hold onto the string while the kyber crystal hangs between his fingers. “I imagine you want this back.”

She shakes her head, though. “No, I think you should hold onto it.”

He raises his eyebrows in surprise. “What? Are you sure?”

Jyn nods, a smooth motion—her mind is made up, and she seems untroubled by the conclusion. “It comforts me, to know you have it.” She shrugs. “If it’s with you, then it’ll never be far from me.” 

That’s not quite true, he thinks. At least, not in the most literal sense. 

She’s playing it off, but her poker face has never been as good as his. He can see the significance the moment they meet eyes. She reaches for the crystal, finally, disentangling it from his fingers as she rises to her feet. Then she’s tying it around his neck, careful to avoid the bandages licking at his collarbones. Jyn searches for his hand among the sheets, then guides it up until both of them are grasping the crystal, warming it beneath their fingers. He wonders if, ultimately, it’ll be enough to save them both. 

“Consider it a promise,” she murmurs, running a hand through his hair before settling down beside him again, their fingers entwined. 

A promise, perhaps, like the opal ring on Leia’s finger. It doesn’t seem likely that it’s the sort of promise he’ll get to keep. 

He hopes, though. He always does. 

 

 

They release him by the end of the week, and some of the color seems to come back into Jyn’s face. He hooks his arm through hers and shuffles back into the world of the living. Despite the days of recuperation, that peculiar exhaustion hasn’t left him—it drags at his every movement, every thought. It’s more of a nuisance than his wound, in truth. He sleeps and sleeps and it never seems to quite leave him. 

By some stroke of luck, Jyn doesn’t yet have another assignment. Neither of them, for a spell, are called to plunge back into battle. Still, Cassian sleeps lightly—he’s never known a silence that didn’t begin to crack, given some time. 

Which is why he’s not surprised to find himself suddenly awake in the early hours of the morning. But something’s off; it doesn’t take him long to shake off the shroud of sleep and reach out his senses for the disturbance. 

Beside him, Jyn lets out a shuddering breath. 

She’s sitting up in bed, grasping at her side with white knuckles. “Jyn?” he breathes, then catches sight of the blood on the sheets. It’s black in the moonlight. Immediately, he reaches toward his shoulder wound, but the bandage is unmarred. It’s not his. 

The blanket is bunched around their ankles. He follows the trail of blood to its source, and Jyn lets out another pained breath. Her eyes are closed, like she’s afraid to look at the red between her thighs and on the bedding below. 

Cassian sits up. “Jyn.”

She acknowledges him, finally, with a brisk nod. He slides out of bed first and, after a moment, she follows, until she’s standing in the center of the room, shivering slightly and looking smaller than he’s ever seen her. 

All she says is, “I’m glad you’re here.”

In his peripheral vision, the blood still stands dark against the sheets. He imagines, briefly, a different version of this night—one where Jyn wakes up alone, to blood and pain and the end of something just beginning. “Of course,” he murmurs, and hands her one of his shirts. 

 

 

The night is long. Medbay is half empty, suspended in perpetual twilight by the dim glow of bacta tanks. Nameless soldiers lie motionless in the half dark. Jyn doesn’t say a word, just nods whenever the droid addresses her. An actual organic doctor comes by just as the sun is beginning to rise, and Cassian finds he has trouble looking up from the floor. He hears the wet pulse of Jyn’s heartbeat during the ultrasound, perceives her hand tightening in his, but feels far away from all of it—still locked up in the night even as day breaks. 

“It’s not your fault,” the doctor is saying, to Jyn. “Miscarriages are pretty common—chromosomal abnormalities and such. You weren’t terribly far along. I can give you something for the discomfort.”

His tone is efficient, perhaps even light. Jyn says nothing.

Afterwards, they make it back to their quarters without running into anyone. Cassian feels safe in the solitude of the pre-dawn silence, in the way that he always sort of does, but finds the room suffocating. The stained sheets stare at him in the early gloom. 

Jyn pauses at the foot of the bed, eyes unfocused. 

“Did you know?” he asks, feeling himself go still in the heavily charged air. 

He wonders if she’ll answer. Eventually, though, she manages a murmur. “I wasn’t sure,” she says, eyes locked on the bed. “But I had a feeling, maybe—a few weeks ago.”

“You didn’t say anything?” It’s not an accusation. Not quite. The air quivers; the crystal around his neck, beneath his shirt, feels hot against his skin.

“I’m not sure what I would’ve said.” Her voice breaks on the last syllable, and she clamps a hand over her mouth like it’s all she can do to hold herself together.

“We’ll need to be more careful,” he says quietly, voice uninflected. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, blocks out the dried blood before her, but the tears still come. He freezes, shamefully, for just a moment, unnerved by the sight of her in a state of such fragmentation. It’s not the first time he’s caught her like this, but it always sends him stumbling—it’s easy to forget, sometimes, that she’s just as wrapped up beneath the layers of herself as he is. Easy to forget that the truncheons and the stone cold resolve and even the softness lurking below still isn’t the full story. 

He recovers quickly and crosses back toward her, a hand reaching out to cup her cheek and pull her against him. He kisses the side of her head, then her hair, arms reeling her in. “Jyn,” he whispers, against the top of her head. When neither of them knows what to say, sometimes that’s enough—a name that is not an alias. A name said softly, rather than cried out in fear. 

“Cassian.” He can’t see her face where it’s pressed against his collarbone, but the raggedness of her voice is enough to tighten his chest. It’s another long breath before she can speak again. “I didn’t know what I wanted. I still don’t.”

He sighs against her hair. “Me neither.”

The words _maybe someday—_ form in his throat, gather behind his teeth, but he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. He can’t. It seems far too arrogant to assume that a _someday_ even exists. 

He steadies himself against her, lets their breaths synchronize. For now, it’s all they have.

 

 

A silence settles between them, heavy and stifling. Before long, Jyn is called off to Mon Cal, with a healed but haggard looking Kes Dameron. Cassian sees her off. Their goodbyes are even quieter than usual—neither of them, it seems, can quite muster the audacity to make promises at the moment. Instead, he presses his forehead against hers, and makes a valiant effort to lose himself in the pits of her eyes while the crystal heats against his skin. 

“Someday,” he says. The word has been haunting him; it slips out of it’s own accord. 

“Someday,” she agrees. He wonders if either of them even know what that means. 

Then she’s gone, swaggering off with a gun on her hip and a rifle strapped to her back. And Draven’s behind him, with a mission debrief and eyes of steel. 

As it happens, though, a few days prowling around the more desolate side of the Outer Rim with K2 by his side serves to clear his head. The air is brisk, the calls close, but not too close. He’s singed by a blaster bolt as he ducks out of a local skirmish, narrowly avoids capture by the local, Imperial-friendly law enforcement. The cheap thrill of evasion is enough to keep him occupied, enough to keep the blood pumping in his veins even as the crystal bounces against his collarbone and reminds him of its presence with every step. 

On the way back to Home One, he finds himself gripping it, as he’s seen Jyn do before. It never seems to be the temperature he expects. It’s too cold for the warmth of the cockpit. He holds it up so that the blue of hyperspace filters through it, rebounding inside the prism and sending a smattering of light across the walls. 

“Do you really believe in the Force?” Kay asks, unimpressed. 

Cassian’s eyes don’t leave the crystal. “I believe in Jyn.”

 

 

Leia has stopped treating him like he’ll shatter at any moment; they’re back to trading witticisms in command center while Mothma preaches diplomacy and Draven calls for blood. 

“We’ve set a date, by the way,” Leia says afterward, as they trickle out of command and meander toward the lower decks of the ship. She’s smiling self-consciously, like she knows the domesticity of such an announcement, in his eyes, stands in stark contrast to the world around them. 

“Oh?” he says, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice. He succeeds; staying composed has never been much of a hurdle for him. “Is it soon?”

“Yes, I’ve had enough waiting.” She looks up at him, then, like she expects him to know the sentiment. He resists the urge to touch the crystal beneath his shirt. 

“A war wedding,” he says, with something close to a teasing smile in his eyes. 

“It’ll be good for morale, if nothing else,” she laughs. “But I think the line between peace and war is beginning to blur, these days.”

He ponders briefly if he agrees with her, taking stock of the galaxy with his considerable expertise. No new Death Stars, no recent grand battles. Only men like him and women like Jyn, striking quick and hard and cleaning off the sort of messes that only war can create. Maybe this is what the end of a conflict looks like. 

He doesn’t know what to do with such a notion. 

They find themselves inside the main hangar, where Leia has a meeting with a pilot just in from Coruscant. He tugs on her sleeve, though, before she can split off. 

“What do you think they’re saying about us?” Cassian asks, with a smile and a nod toward the other side of the bay. 

Jyn and Han Solo are standing beneath the aft engines of the Millennium Falcon, exasperation marring their features as they watch Leia and Cassian making their way through the maze of ships. Jyn catches his eye and smirks, and there’s more light in her expression than he’s seen in the last few weeks. Between them, something thaws. 

“Nothing good,” Leia says, eyes crinkling in a smile. 

Han says something else and Jyn laughs, her eyes still on Cassian. He thinks about reading their lips, but doesn’t. The moment is joyous and secret and glimmering; he watches Jyn laugh again, feels something warm in his chest, and wonders if this is what peace will be like, if it comes for him. 

 

 

The dress is indigo, the color of the sky just as the last of a sunset fades into night. He keeps expecting to see stars sparkling out between the folds of the fabric, but instead all he sees is her—the curl of her lips over her teeth, the old burns winding up her exposed arm, the slow blink when her eyes meet his. She is radiant. 

The last time she’d worn a dress, he’d ended up on his knees, her hands tangling in his hair. Tonight, though, the party is still raging. He doesn’t recall how they ended up on the dancefloor, but now his arms are around her, her head resting against his chest. It feels right; it feels like he could stand here, linked with her and drifting in lazy circles, for a thousand more nights. It’s not just the open bar, paid for by the bride and groom, that has him bathed in warmth and calm. 

“This is a good wedding,” she says against his neck. Her words aren’t quite slurred, but they’re getting there. 

“Have you actually been to any others?” he asks, with a smirk she can’t see. 

“No,” she confesses, and her laugh reverberates through his chest. 

The music changes and, with it, the pace of the dancing around them. Neither of them, though, are in any state for complex motion—Cassian trips over her feet, and in attempt to salvage the dance, she hoists him up and increases the tempo. Somehow, he ends up grasping her free hand and twirling in a clumsy circle. She attempts to dip him when he falls back into her grip, and nearly sends them both toppling over when his weight causes her to lose her footing. Still hunched over him, she goes in for a kiss and he laughs into her mouth. 

“Could you’ve imagined all this?” she asks breathlessly, once they’re back upright. 

He’s not sure if she’s talking about the two of them, or the seething joy of the party, or the galaxy on the brink of peace. Regardless, the answer is, “No.”

She lays against him again, tucking herself beneath his chin. “This war is going to end someday,” she sighs out, breath warm against his neck. 

“Can you believe it?” he asks.

She looks up at him, eyes molten and penetrating. He’s completely bare beneath her gaze, he’s sure. “Sometimes.”

Something uncertain writhes inside him. Something hopeful. This war is actually going to end, he thinks. _Someday._

And, in moments like this, he almost believes it.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
